How soldiers deal with the job of killing

[carl]

You see here we go in the direction of Grossman in the thinking that killing is somehow 'bad' and will inevitably lead to feelings of guilt and grief. .

Not so. Combat killing in war is not murder, it is not a homicide, it is a justifiable killing. (I'm not talking atrocities here).

Agreed. Perhaps Marlantes is mixing up what would be normal from a civilian peacetime standpoint and what would work in that situation, with what is in the best intests of the man in wartime and what would work in the that situation. The object of "what would work" is to help the man function normally in the months and years to come. Since the situations are so different, what would work would be different too.

Marlantes suggestion should be born in mind though, for if it proved useful to him, it may be proved useful to others. Another tool to be used if needed so to speak.

He claims to have has visions of the face of an NVA who threw a grenade at him and who he mat or may not have killed..

The father of a freind was a 20mm Oerlikon gunner on a ship in the Pacific in WWII. A natural born gunner like the man said in Twelvo O'Clock High. They were under Japanese air attack and Japanese plane flew by his gun very very close heading for a nearby ship. My freind's father swung the gun to kill the pilot, did so and splashed the plane immediately. The plane was close enought to see the pilot clearly and he always felt bad about what he did, not about splashing the plane, but about aiming for the pilot instead of the engine. It didn't matter that the quickest and surest way to down the plane was to get the pilot. He still felt bad.

So I believe that Marlantes sees that and maybe his way of looking at the thing would have helped that one particular Oerlikon gunner, then or later on.

So please guide me to the critical comment..

I didn't read the Company Commander comment. The first 4 comments to the Best Defense blog post itself tear Grossman apart. Sorry for the confused wording on my part.

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts...eir_own_top_10

Yes but... I'll bet the book 'Black Hearts: One platoon's descent into madness in Iraq's triangle of death' will sell more copies than that book about normal, well adjusted soldiers (read boring) as opposed to a bunch of head-jobs.

True, Black Hearts may sell more. But a good thing to take from that as far as junior leaders reading it may be that they will learn more per page from a narritive of failures.

If you ever get a chance to read Duty, I would be interested in what you think. It is more about a son relating to his dead father though.